CEO of Twitter, Elon Musk, on Wednesday announced the founding of a new company called xAI with the goal of “understand the true nature of the universe.”
Twelve individuals from DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Tesla, and the University of Toronto make up the team for the new organisation.
Dan Hendrycks, director of the Centre for AI Safety, a charity engaged in AI research, will serve as xAI’s advisor. Additionally, it will cooperate with Twitter and Musk’s other business, Tesla, to “advance [its] mission.”
An official announcement is billed for Friday, but but xAI’s roster offers some hints as to what the company might be working on.
Many of the members have expertise in big language models like as OpenAI’s GPT-4 or have hands-on knowledge of methods like reinforcement learning, which “teaches” AI models how to complete tasks by rewarding them for doing so.
In an interview with Tucker Carlson in April, Musk stated his desire to create “TruthGPT,” a “maximum-truth-seeking AI.”
In an article published earlier this year by Business Insider, it was reported that Musk had bought thousands of GPUs to power the future generative AI product.
The Financial Times also claimed that Musk intended to found an AI company to take on Microsoft-backed OpenAI. According to reports, Musk even asked SpaceX and Tesla investors for money to launch the company.
X Corp, the name given to Twitter since early April, and the “X” designation Musk has given to his concept of a “everything app” serve as the namesakes of xAI.
Since the billionaire’s breakup with OpenAI founders Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, and others, Musk’s AI goals have evolved over time.
Musk and others donated $1 billion to OpenAI when it was established as a charity in 2015. However, as OpenAI’s emphasis switched from open source research to commercial initiatives, Musk got disenchanted and resigned from the OpenAI board in 2018.
